


Fascimile

by ember_alda



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Mutually Unrequited, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-30
Updated: 2011-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-28 12:03:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ember_alda/pseuds/ember_alda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"For Arthur, Eames exists linear in time, but here, in this mad little world, Eames knows himself the best, and he knows that's not the case. This consciousness 'Eames', is only a continuation, a clone. Each time Arthur dies in the dream, the Eames of that time dies. He breaks down back into the supersonic neurons and hormones and chemical endorphins he arose from- he dissipates into nothing, into Arthur, again."</p><p> </p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Silhouette

**Author's Note:**

> From the [Inception anon kink meme prompt post 17](http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/19177.html).
> 
> "Eames has a projection of himself in his subconscious. This projection falls in love with Arthur, but alas, poor projection!Eames will never get his man because he's not real. I'd love to read a fic from the projection's POV. Idek how this would work. Does projection!Eames only show up when Eames and Arthur go down together? Is projection!Eames a manifestation of Eames' real subconscious desire for Arthur? As mentioned in the title, actual Arthur/Eames is optional, this is all about poor unloved projection!Eames. Go wild, author anon! :)"

 

Each time Eames sees Arthur enter the dream, he automatically remembers. He feels these memories push into himself and take root, reeling across his mind as he watches. Arthur gets coffee across the street and Eames knows he'll spill out a third of the cup to drown it in cream, he knows he'll draw from the holster at his ankle while pretending to tie his shoe when the woman behind him goes to stab him with a fork, he knows the calm, set look of his face as he runs down into the ally, he knows what he looks like when spilled across the street, skull smashed open and flesh peeled back stark and red in open air.

It's the last thing he sees, every time, before the dream fades away and Eames cracks up the sides and falls into the void.

\-----

After a while he thinks Arthur gets a little suspicious of him, but Eames can't help it. The more and more he gets to see of Arthur, the more he becomes complete. He knows that the warm feeling of hope flooding his chest each time he's recreated is foolish. With every dream he feels closer to the pinnacle of himself- but Eames also knows he'll never reach it.

He goes up to Arthur once, and only once.

"You're looking unusually chipper today. Did you finally shoot Morrison after he called you an unskilled cretin for not finishing the job?" He asks in lazy slouch, arm against the bar while tilting the beer in his hand towards the other man.

There's almost no response. Arthur simply moves his head slightly to the side to glance at him, but then pauses. There's a curious look in his eyes as he stares directly at Eames, and the longer it goes on the more uncomfortable it gets until Eames can't do anything but stare back silently and clear his throat.

Arthur looks down at his own hand, stopping it from reaching across any further, bemused at how it almost touches Eames' sleeve. Instead, he lets it drop to the bar where he takes a long swig from his own bottle before responding, shoulders hunched low and relaxed.

"What's unusual is how much easier you are to disturb in here."

And after that, there's nothing else to say. Eames can only stand dumbly beside him, uncomprehending. Yet this uneasiness in his gut climbs out at that clarity in Arthur's eyes as he looks at him, like he can see straight through to what he's feeling, and really, that's what Eames is supposed to do to _other_ people, right?

When Arthur finishes his drink, he glances up for a short moment at Eames before pulling out the gun and shooting himself in the face.

There's a fine and horrible spatter across the wall, broken glass and dripping beer mixing with the gleaming white of bone in one infinite moment. Eames tries to cling to the sound, the colors, and the smells of the dream but it streaks away too fast, pulling him under and sucking out his soul before he falls again.

\-----

The thing is, he already knows that Arthur could never see him as anything else. How can some one be in love with a person who exists less than a day?

For Arthur, Eames exists linear in time, but here, in this mad little world, Eames knows himself the best, and he knows that's not the case. This consciousness 'Eames', is only a continuation, a clone. Each time Arthur dies in the dream, the Eames of that time dies. He breaks down back into the supersonic neurons and hormones and chemical endorphins he arose from- he dissipates into nothing, into Arthur, again.

But Arthur remembers, he remembers what Eames did, he remembers what Eames is like and Eames' memory is built back up form the last interaction, so that for every time Arthur dies, an Eames dies, and for every dream Arthur dreams, an Eames is born from the scraps of Arthur's memories.

\-----

It's after that one brief conversation, that everything turns upside down. Arthur looks back at him now, when before Eames simply watched, un-noticed from the side. It's a small weight that wasn't there before, but now that he'd made contact it presses on him each time. Eames can't get the courage to speak to him again, and no matter how strange and heavy that small gaze Arthur gives him is, he can't stop himself. He's forced to follow and forced to watch, accumulating nothing more than a long catalogue of images of Arthur's corpse.

Sometimes he feels cheated, sometimes he feels so frustrated at the Eames up there, who gets to see beyond that crumpled and bloody body at the end. Sometimes he gets so angry because the other him has the opportunity to revel in Arthur eating at his desk, sleeping softly to the low hum of the PASIV, tipping in his chair, sometimes smiling at the cutting phrases Eames says to their more stupid clients.

He gets all those moments and Eames gets nothing here. What Eames gets is silence, he gets that painful gaze Arthur pins him with that is too full of self- knowledge to be pity.

And sometimes, when he's behind a wall of glass looking out across a space too vast to cross, he admits it to himself, the real reason why Arthur could never see him as more than a simple projection.

He cannot fall in love with himself.

 


	2. The Subject

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a small continuation, with real Eames' POV.

 

"I like to think in real life I'm not that creepy."

"Then you would be sorely mistaken. I don't think you've spent enough time with yourself as a pregnant woman."

Eames frowns a little. "I was perfectly charming. Ariadne said I had a glow about me."

Arthur continues to make little notes at the secretarial desk and refrains from saying that Ariadne thinks everyone has a glow about them when she is high, opting to ignore Eames who is busy staring at himself across the hotel lobby.

"I don't think I've ever looked so…focused in my life."

Arthur finally glances up, face the same unlined, expressionless block it normally is when concentrating on the job, even one as small and tedious as this.

"That is something we can both agree on."

A small smile breaks across Eames' face as he gets an idea.

"I think I'm going to go over there and have a little fun."

He's surprised when a hand shoots out and crushes his wrist in a vise. Eames tenses and jerks around to face the other man, who is suddenly looking very displeased.

"Don't."

There's a sharpness in Eames' smile now that wasn't therefore. His eyes harden while he twists his wrist and grips Arthur's in turn, clenching his fingers just as tightly. Even when he is on the verge of anger, his voice is light.

"Oh?"

Arthur tugs his hand twice, in warning. He already knew that Eames hates being told what to do, especially in the tone of voice he had just used, but he uses it again, anyway.

"Eames. Leave it alone."

"What are we afraid of, darling? It's not like there are any big secrets. There isn't much I can keep from myself."

Arthur refuses to look at him in the eye. Instead, he's furtively drawn back to that corner with the easy chair where Eames' copy sits with a newspaper half folded in his lap. There's a harsh and self-admonishing light in Arthur's face before it closes up and melts down into something almost like pity. Suddenly Eames is less angry and more intrigued.

His hand is abruptly released.

"Fine. But I'm coming with you."

\-----

While they cross the beige and cream tile, Eames observes the low slouch to Arthur's shoulders, the flat line of his lips that seem exaggeratedly nonchalant, the ways his steps are short and cut. To anyone else it would be nothing but to Eames he gets the feeling Arthur is feeling a little hunted the closer and closer they approach the clone, who is by the way staring across at the two of them completely unashamed and with thorough attention.

When they get close enough and Eames can see himself clearly, he stops. The clone is not looking at him, but at Arthur, who stands still, a few feet away. It's almost palpable, from the way clone Eames' lips are tilted slightly to the side in half smile, the way the clone's brows are slightly tense, the soft, tenuous curve of his jaw.

It's a little terrifying, to see that look on his own face, because Eames knows what it means. Eyes going wide, he feels a little stunned and out of sorts when he finally realizes what it is that made Arthur so hesitant, that what the clone is revealing isn't Eames' secret but someone else's. Arthur doesn't turn around, instead his shoulders hunch even more, a little defeated in their set.

Eames' mouth unsticks itself, still numb from the shock before he blurts, "I didn't know."

When Arthur speaks, he sounds a bit tired, though his voice smooth and even. "It doesn't matter. It's- I just." A small sigh breaks his words. "Please don't hurt him. He's just an idea, he doesn't have much. Just let him be. He'll fade away eventually."

A small, choked sound escapes Eames' throat despite himself, half laugh and half something else.

"Don't- don't hurt him? Don't- you know you are talking about-"

The sharp movements of a hand cuts off the rest of what he says. "I know," The words pressed tight, as a small thread of anger increases the trembling in Arthur's hand while he tries to keep control. "I did this to myself."

Eames physically turns him around, whirling him away from that impostor, from that reflection that is as much of Arthur as it is of himself.

This was too fucked up. Arthur was protecting it, a reflection that had nothing to its name, not even its own emotions, but really it was Arthur who was protecting himself but who wanted to protect him, Eames.

When they face each other, it's almost as strangers. Arthur still looks composed, but this deep, tense furrow scores his head while he seems puzzled, at a loss of what to do in the face of this confrontation.

"It's fine if you just ignore it. He's not dangerous. It's just a projection."

His mouth opens to object but Arthur interrupts again.

"It's my subconscious, Eames. You have to know that not everything you think of when dreaming, uninhibited or not, translates into reality. I don't- I can't- feel anything like that up above."

And there's this look on Arthur's face as he stares straight into Eames' eye, like he's sorry, like he's apologizing for their lukewarm acquaintance, like he's letting Eames down easy, even though it's Arthur's subconscious projection that shows he's in love with Eames.

It's small and it's painful, it's so horribly awkward, and Eames tries to think of something to say- anything.

"Does he know?" Is the first thing he blurts out.

Arthur turns to give a quick glance to the clone. "That his feelings are just the reflection of what my subconscious wants you to feel? I don't know, I've never talked to him much. It's dangerous to wrap yourself up in projections of people you know."

Eames thinks of Cobb and Mal and that whole mess. Then, he thinks about how he and Arthur are nothing like that, and this small trickle of relief slowly seeps back inside him, relaxing the jittering tension he held inside himself since he saw the way the clone looks at Arthur. The shock still sits in the back of his mind, but-

"Yeah. I know." And he does, because unlike Cobb, he and Arthur know the difference between dream and reality. There's no romance between them, they aren't a great tragedy because the idea of the two of them in love is so far removed from how things are, from who they are, and Eames has to be relieved because even though he has lived and done a lot, he still doesn't know the first thing about taking up something as heavy as some one else's love.

So the two of them stand in the lobby, facing each other, purposefully ignoring the third man behind them as the music starts to seep in, a slow and fine finale to this strange dream.

When Arthur pulls his gun out from his side holster, the last thing Eames sees is himself, opaque and alien eyes watching their death scene with something like jealously, something like wistfulness.

 

 ****

THE END

 

**Author's Note:**

> I twisted the prompt around a little, in which projection!Eames isn't in the real Eames' dreams, but in Arthur's dreams instead, and real Eames finds out about him.
> 
> I just wanted to clean up some stuff from the original anon post I made, and also I changed the title from the meme, in case anyone cares :P


End file.
